Sawatch
AvalancheAndrew McWilliams, Jason Konigsberg · Feb 27, 2023 · Sawatch
Weather
Temperatures quickly warmed into the twenties and skies became cloudier as the day progressed. Winds were gusty from the southwest and there was no precipitation.
Snowpack
The far east side of the range had little snow and was heavily wind-stripped. As we drove further up the road towards St. Elmo, the snow coverage became more consistent. Near Tincup Pass westerlies above treeline were generally stripped of snow. The height of snow where we traveled on northerly and easterly-facing slopes ranged from about 100cm in thinner areas to an average of 120-150cm with drifts up to 200cm. The snowpack was variable near and above treeline where thinner areas quickly transitioned into stiff, dense wind deposits. It appeared that much of the snow available for transport was moved lower on slopes and caught in treed areas. Thin areas were primarily composed of facets and were not supportable to boot travel. We generally found a 20-50cm thick pencil to knife hard (on the Hand Hardness Scale) layer of wind-packed rounds above a faceted snowpack that was one-finger to four-finger hard. Basal weak layers were unreactive in Extended Column Tests, but we did get propagating and non-propagating results in a fist-hard layer of facets below the harder wind-pack layer at the surface.
Avalanche
The only avalanche we observed was out of the steep peaks above Cascade campground. This is the far eastern portion of the range above the plowed road.